Comments | ficwriter1966: SPN FIC - He Believes In Happily Ever After

ficwriter1966

SPN FIC - He Believes In Happily Ever After

Apr 12, 2009 09:08

As promised. Set Season 1, prior to Shadow.

CHARACTERS: John, Mary, Rufus Turner
GENRE: Gen
RATING: PG
SPOILERS: In the Beginning
LENGTH: 3376 words

With a headache blossoming like a summer-rain-fed weed behind his eyes, pain he told himself came purely from driving without sunglasses, from sleeping and eating and drinking too little (drinking ( Read more... )

rufus, john, season 1, mary

Comments 40

may7fic April 12 2009, 16:39:19 UTC

This was brutally painful, Carol. Wonderfully representative of John and all that had driven him over the many years. This hurts but the truth often does. Thank-you.

ficwriter1966 April 12 2009, 20:44:09 UTC

I re-watched those early John episodes over the weekend and they reminded me that yes, there was something in John that had believed in happily ever after - and then watched that dream be crushed. I wonder if he walked in to keep his deal with the YED thinking that maybe, somehow, his boys could someday find happily ever after.

Glad you liked the story. Thanks for the comments!

may7fic April 12 2009, 23:17:47 UTC

When John spoke of wishing Sam could go back to school and Dean could have a home, I think it really showed us that "happily ever after" was still a dream for him -- through his boys. As tragic and dire their lives have become since his death, I still hope that - for John's sake, almost as much as their own - that dream is still a possibility.

ficwriter1966 April 13 2009, 13:53:30 UTC

I don't know how much JDM gets into his characters - but I'd love to ask him, or Kripke (except I don't know that Kripke dissects things to this degree either), what exactly was John thinking at the two key moments we've seen:
a) When he went into the hospital room and said "Okay" to the YED, and
b) When he said "goodbye" to the boys at the cemetery after the YED was dead. We're left to imagine that for ourselves, but I would love to know what the writer and/or the actor think was going on. It's such an important thing in the family dynamic - did he have any spark of hope that things could end happily, or at least with some degree of peace, for his boys? It calls for much, much pondering.

Thread 7

luu_alita April 12 2009, 17:00:47 UTC

*wibbles and then goes to make John soup*

ficwriter1966 April 12 2009, 20:44:31 UTC

Better make it a *large* bowl. :)

morganslady April 12 2009, 17:01:19 UTC

Knowing what John wanted before Azazel and what he became after is heartbreaking.. Thank you for your take on things.

ficwriter1966 April 12 2009, 20:46:18 UTC

You're welcome! After re-watching those episodes, I started to think that John's life was spun around on the night Samuel and Deanna died - that things were never *really* right for him after that. He and Mary might have built a nice little life - but she was still keeping secrets, if not outright lying. And he had to have wondered what really happened.

irismay42 April 12 2009, 17:36:13 UTC

Oh that was heartbreaking. I always wondered whether John knew what had happened to him - whether he knew he'd died and Sam had paid the price for his coming back. The Winchesters are a messed up bunch aren't they?

Great to see Rufus in a fic. I really hope he turns up in the show again some time!

ficwriter1966 April 12 2009, 20:48:09 UTC

I started to think that when he told the YED "I've known for some time now" that he didn't just mean the situation with Sam. I think he uncovered most of the story, if not all of it, and knew exactly how Sam's being a "special kid" came about.

It took me a bit to get a handle on Rufus's voice, but it was fun to work with him. Yes, I hope they bring him back!

Glad you enjoyed the story. Thanks for the comments!

caffienekitty April 13 2009, 04:52:50 UTC

*nods* Yep.

I love how you've spun this, with a sense of... kind of like an incomplete epiphany from John. Like he knows, and he knows that he knows, but he doesn't want to know, so he's suppressing that last conscious connection. Like he is keeping himself mentally teetering on the precipice of realization, trying futilely to hang on to the scraps of his 'happily ever after' even after he knows what happened. This story has that aching sense of open-endedness, while still being very final, and it suits the topic and character perfectly. Well done.

ficwriter1966 April 13 2009, 13:39:53 UTC

You know that feeling of, "Until I say it out loud, it's not true"? I wanted to play for that here - that with all his work, all his research, John does know what happened, he's put almost all the pieces together - but until he gets that confirmation from Rufus, it's not quite real. He can still hang on to a little bit of denial, turn the whole thing into just some nightmare he's invented. Then Rufus plugs that final piece into the puzzle and there's no more looking away.

Glad you enjoyed it!